A doctor from Salinas Valley State Prison's once state-of-the-art psychiatric hospital has contradicted California's assurances to federal judges that mentally ill inmates no longer have to wait for hospital beds.

Dr. John Brim said in a recent sworn deposition that waiting lists for the beds still exist and hospital supervisors are pressuring psychiatrists to shuffle patients out of mental health crisis beds before they are ready to keep waiting list numbers down.

Brim said prison officials have cut back on soap, clean sheets and other essentials. His deposition was taken March 1 as part of two decadelong inmate lawsuits. The class-action suits led to creation of the Salinas Valley mental health facility as well as a Supreme Court order to drastically reduce California's prison population on the grounds that overcrowding has hindered proper medical and mental health care.

His statements contradict January court filings by Gov. Jerry Brown's administration that say patients no longer have to wait for mental health beds in the state's prisons.

"By July 2012, the state had successfully guaranteed timely access to inpatient mental health care for all class members needing hospitalization," Brown's filing reads.

Another document filed by the state in January said California now provides "timely access to quality mental health treatment at all levels of care."

But Brim suggested psychiatrists are under pressure to try to keep the waiting lists low, even at the cost of patient care.

"There was a general feeling, and I felt this way, that we were under pressure from administration to move the old people out, the old patients out, and take in new patients so as to keep our waiting list down," he said.

All of the unit's psychiatrists, he said, "felt that it was getting to the point that people were not staying, in all cases at least, as long as they needed to. There was pressure from administration to get them out quickly so that new people could be brought in."

Once touted as state of the art, the facility now suffers from excessive doctor caseloads that are four times the state's preferred standard, Brim testified.

The prison hospital is run by the California Department of State Hospitals, which provides crisis beds for maximum-security inmates with severe mental illness.

Officials from the department did not respond Thursday to requests for comment.

In 2006, when corrections officials announced the prison hospital's launch in response to federal court orders, the $111 million facility brought the promise of improved mental health care and an infusion of jobs to the area. But Brim said that in addition to psychiatrist shortages, the hospital is short on other kinds of staff, including social workers, psychologists, nurses and rehabilitation therapists.

The hospital's social workers, he said, recently expressed concern because "they were stretched so thin."

Brim testified hospital staff members say the unit is short on soap, clean sheets and clothes, and other essentials for hygiene. The staff blame the prison's laundry for the shortages, Brim said.

In January and in February, psychiatrists at the prison, one of two in Soledad, told state officials the staffing shortage at the facility's mental health wing has reached "crisis level."

"We cannot in good conscience continue to take on a higher and higher caseload without making you aware of our concerns," said a Jan. 23 letter signed by nine psychiatrists at the facility. "We need to inform you that we will be working under a state of protest."

Earlier this month, Department of State Hospital officials told The Herald that replacement staff had been hired and some psychiatrists who were expected to leave will not.

"There is currently no anticipated staffing crisis at DSH-Salinas Valley," said David O'Brien, speaking for the department in Sacramento.

Brim said he testified because he and other psychiatrists felt it was important to speak up about the hospital's conditions, although he indicated that some doctors at the prison appeared fearful of professional retaliation if they testified under oath.

"Many of my colleagues expressed considerable apprehension about being singled out to give testimony, and they pointed out to me that I had sort of reached the end of my working life expectancy, (and) didn't have a whole lot to lose," he said. "And I agreed that they were probably right about that."